Scenarios - A thinking and planning tool

Scenarios are usually thought of as a good training tool. They are often seen as a basis for risk management. Right now, the benefits of scenarios are being highlighted in Australia as a result of recent experiences with floods, cyclones, bushfires, power cuts and storm damage. Many organisations have failed to see scenario planning as a wonderful method for strategy thinking and planning, yet experience demonstrates that scenario planning produces innovative, practical, inspirational plans that focus on delighting customers and clients.

There are many benefits to utilising scenarios in your strategy processes, even as your main method. Here are some of the benefits.

Customer and Client Focus Scenarios always force confrontation with the key question for any organisation - how are you going to continue to delight your customers and clients regardless of external events and future developments? This is the basis for every scenario that can contribute to your business success.

Aspirational Scenarios also force a focus on aspirational thinking - How will you handle things and what are the best results you can achieve in any situation? As a result, scenarios help define clear aspirations for an organisation, which is the basis for inspiration.

Story-based Scenarios both tell and allow participants to experience stories. Stories are an important part of organisational identity and communication. Humans are very comfortable with stories and understand them far more easily than concepts. Scenario planning results in identifying the themes and stories which will drive your vision and strategic communication to achieve goals.

Values Identification Scenarios move organisations from identifying general values into identifying the real and specific values that create and bind organisations. Many organisations claim they will have open and honest communication, even where they operate in environments that require confidentiality to operate, such as the commercial confidentiality of contracts. Scenario planning can identify more specific and realistic values, such as being open and honest about matters that impact on the delight of customers, clients, suppliers and staff. General and meaningless values statements do not stand up to the scrutiny of a good scenario.

Realism Although scenarios can be taken anywhere the imagination can go, working through the scenario always brings you back to reality, as you are required to come up with real answers utilising the resources at hand. As a result, the plans that arise from scenario planning have realistic goals. You will also usually be able to create clear and prioritised action plans.

Foresight Scenarios are the basis for creating corporate foresight, which is often lacking in organisations that focus so heavily on day to day achievement. Foresight acknowledges that there will always be unknowns and the unexpected and provides a better framework for achievement than many of the prediction models currently used.

High Performance Teams Any crisis manager worth their salt will tell you that a good crisis team beats a good crisis plan anytime (though both is better). The same is true of all planning, achievement and operation functions in an organisation. The more you are able to develop your team, the better will be the implementation and flexibility of any plan. Scenario planning is the best of both worlds, providing on the spot team development while developing the plan. Scenario planning is also a very enjoyable activity, challenging people to wok as a team and providing many outlets for some work-based fun. It can also bring a lot of people into your planning process in ways that will allow them to make real contributions to the final outcomes.

Consistency in methodology Scenario planning can be used at every level from major strategic plans to work team operations plans. They can also be used in specialist areas, such as risk management and crisis planning. As a result, you can create consistent development, achievement and reporting systems across the whole organisation.

A word of warning - at the end of scenario exercises, participants will often feel they've had a great time and been challenged. As time goes on, they may feel as though they have actually achieved very little towards creating an actual plan, because the plan development comes through interpretation and analysis of the scenario responses. It is important that whoever is overseeing your scenario planning is able to quickly provide to everyone who took part an interpretation and analysis of what took place, preferably in the form of a plan framework, if not an actual draft plan.

How have you used scenario planning in the past and what were the outcomes?